• • •
THE dreamers, led by Judah; the politicians, led by Lincoln; the financiers, led by the congressmen and the Ames brothers, Durant, and Huntington; the surveyors, led by Dodge and Dey and Judah; the generals, led by Grant and Sherman; the engineers, led by Clement, Montague, Reed, and others; the construction bosses, led by Strobridge and the Casement brothers; the railroad men; the foremen; the Chinese, the Irish, and all the others who picked up a shovel or a sledgehammer or a rail; and the American people who insisted that it had to be done and who paid for it, built the transcontinental railroad.
None of this might have happened if different choices had been made, by any one of the foregoing groups and individuals. But a choice made is made, it cannot be changed. Things happened as they happened. It is possible to imagine all kinds of different routes across the continent, or a better way for the government to help private industry, or maybe to have the government build and own it. But those things didn’t happen, and what did take place is grand. So we admire those who did it—even if they were far from perfect—for what they were and what they accomplished and how much each of us owes them.
Notes
CHAPTER ONE: PICKING THE ROUTE
1 J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), pp. 51-52. Wallace D. Farnham, “Grenville Dodge and the Union Pacific: A Study of Historical Legends,” Journal of American History, vol. 51 (June 1964-March 1965), pp. 632-50, calls this story “false,” as he does nearly everything else in Dodge’s autobiography and in Perkins’s biography. It strikes me as true, even down to the details.
2 Jeanne Minn Bracken, ed., Iron Horses Across America (Carlisle, Mass: Discovery Enterprises, 1995), p. 5.
3 Thomas Curtis Clarke et al., The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management and Appliances (New York: Scribner, 1889), p. 1.
4 Sarah Gordon, Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929 (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1996), p. 136.
5 Quoted in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., “Henry Varnum Poor,” in The Golden Spike: A Centennial Remembrance (New York: American Geographical Society, 1969), p. 4.
6 Roy B. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953-55), vol. 1, pp. 5-6.
7 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 62.
8 The census shows that Illinois grew from 157,000 in 1830 to 1.7 million in 1860; Iowa from 43,000 in 1840 to 675,000 in 1860.
9 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Times Books, 1988), p. 14.
10 William Beard, “I Have Labored Hard to Find the Law,” Illinois Historical Journal, Winter 1992, pp. 209-20; Charles Leroy Brown, “Abraham Lincoln and the Illinois Central Railroad,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 36 (1943), p. 128.
11 David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 155.
12 Ibid., pp. 155-56.
13 Beard, “I Have Labored,” p. 210.
14 Brown, “Lincoln and the IC,” pp. 122-25, 133.
15 Donald, Lincoln, p. 157.
16 Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway (Council Bluffs, Iowa: Monarch Printing Co., 1997 reprint), p. 5.
17 William Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 295.
18 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 7.
19 Ibid., pp. 16-67.
20 Ibid., p. 19.
21 Dodge, How We Built, p. 6.
22 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 23.
23 Dodge, How We Built, p. 7.
24 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 31.
25 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 13.
26 Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1864.
27 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, pp. 54-55.
28 Dodge, Hon; We Built, p. 9.
29 Donald, Lincoln, p. 206.
30 Dodge, How We Built, p. 5; Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 33.
31 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 34.
32 Ibid., p. 35.
33 Council Bluffs Bugle, July 1859.
34 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 37.
35 Council Bluffs Nonpareil, Aug. 12, 1859.
36 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 53.
37 Quoted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory: Building the Central Pacific Across the High Sierra (Palo Alto, Calif.: American West Publishing, 1969), p. 21.
38 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 55.
39 Ibid., p. 62.
40 Ibid., p. 63
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., p. 66.
CHAPTER TWO: GETTING TO CALIFORNIA
1 Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), p. 49.
2 Charles Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
3 C.B.V. DeLamater Memoir, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
4 Lewis, Big Four, p. 55.
5 Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
6 Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels and Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol. 15 (New York: Scribner, 1895), pp. 124-25.
7 DeLamater Memoir, Bancroft Library.
8 Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
9 DeLamater Memoir, Bancroft Library.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Collis Huntington Memoir, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
13 David Lavender, The Great Persuader (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 1-7.
14 Lewis, Big Four, p. 222.
15 Ibid., pp. 223-24.
16 Lavender, Great Persuader, pp. 12-16.
17 Huntington Memoir, Bancroft Library.
18 William T. Sherman, Memoirs, 2 vols. printed in 1 (New York: Library of America, 1990 edition, first published 1875), vol. 1, pp. 35-43.
19 Ibid., p. 58.
20 John Debo Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad: Central Pacific, Union Pacific (New York: Simmon-Boardman, 1950), p. 80.
21 Lavender, Great Persuader, pp. 48-50.
22 Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 87.
23 Ibid., p. 95.
24 Ibid., p. 101.
25 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter [to Bancroft], 12/14/89,” as it is usually cited, is in Anna Judah Papers, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
26 Ibid.
27 Carl Wheat, “A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah,” California Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 4 (Sept. 1925), pp. 219-22; Lewis, Big Four, pp. 3-5.
28 American Railroad Journal, April 5, 1851.
29 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 222.
30 Sacramento Union, June 20, 1854.
31 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 223.
32 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
33 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 229.
34 Lewis, Big Four, p. 11.
35 Ibid., pp. 229-33.
36 Sacramento Union, Jan. 29, 1859.
37 Lewis, Big Four, pp. 236-37.
38 San Francisco Daily Alta California, Oct. 20, 1859.
1 Quoted in Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), p. 15.
CHAPTER THREE: THE BIRTH OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC
2 Oliver Jensen, The American Heritage History of Railroads in America (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1975), p. 84.
3 Oscar Lewis, The Big Four, p. 17; see also Robert West Howard, The Great Iron Trail: The Story of the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Bonanza Books, 1962), p. 107.
4 Carl Wheat, “A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah,” p. 238.
5 Lewis, Big Four, p. 17.
6 Howard, Great Iron Trail, p. 107.
7 Theodore Judah, Report to the Pacific Railroad Convention, published by Sacramento Daily Union, July 25, 1860, in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley, p. 62.
8 Grenvil
le M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses. (Council Bluffs, Iowa: Monarch Printing Co., n.d.), p. 10.
9 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 238.
10 Lewis, Big Four, p. 18.
11 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter [to Bancroft], 12/14/89,” Bancroft Library.
12 Judah, Report to the Convention.
13 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
14 Ibid.
15 David Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 87.
16 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
17 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 242.
18 Ibid., pp. 243-44.
19 Ibid., p. 245.
20 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
21 Charles Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
22 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
23 Lewis, Big Four, p. 25.
24 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
25 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” pp. 245-46.
26 Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
27 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 247.
28 Quoted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 33.
29 Quoted in ibid., p. 33.
30 Sacramento Union, Aug. 7, 1861.
31 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 38.
32 Report of the Chief Engineer of Central Pacific Railroad Company, Oct. 1, 1861, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
33 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 251.
34 Ibid.; John Debo Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad, p. 61.
35 Robert Russell, Improvement of Communication with the Pacific Coast as an Issue in American Politics (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1948), p. 294.
36 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 251.
37 Ibid., p. 252.
38 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 14.
39 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 38.
40 Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 105.
41 Ibid.
42 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 254.
43 Quoted in Russell, Improvement of Communication, p. 296.
44 Dodge, How We Built, p. 10.
45 Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 108.
46 Russell, Improvement of Communication, p. 296.
47 Sacramento Union, June 18, 1862.
48 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 47-48.
49 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 256.
50 Henry V. Poor, “The Pacific Railroad,” North American Review, vol. 128 (June 1879), p. 665.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE BIRTH OF THE UNION PACIFIC
1 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 50.
2 J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 86.
3 Ibid., p. 123.
4 Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885-86), vol. 2, chap. 2, p. 31.
5 Quoted in ibid., p. 89.
6 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 92.
7 Ibid., p. 91.
8 Ibid., pp. 95-96.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., pp. 100, 104.
11 Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, pp. 10-12; John W. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads (New York: Arno Press, 1981, reprint of 1927 ed.), pp. 201-5. Wallace Farnham, “Grenville Dodge and the Union Pacific: A Study of Historical Legends,” Journal of American History, vol. 51 (June 1964), p. 636, calls this story “absurd.” It doesn’t seem so to me, or to Alan Nevins, or to other historians.
12 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 133.
13 Maury Klein, Union Pacific, vol. 1, Birth of a Railroad, 1862-1893 (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1987), p. 24.
14 Ibid., p. 23.
15 Ibid., p. 24.
16 Ibid., p. 25.
17 Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 72-73.
18 Ibid., p. 74.
19 Ibid., p. 70.
20 Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 204.
21 Ibid., pp. 26-27.
22 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 76.
23 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 29.
24 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 80.
25 Ibid., p. 84.
26 Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders 1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action, (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), p. 99.
27 Quoted in Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (Lincoln, Neb: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), p. 345.
28 Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 208.
29 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 132.
30 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 29.
31 Ibid., p. 30.
32 Ibid., p. 31.
33 Ibid., p. 32.
34 Ibid., p. 33.
35 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, pp. 91-92.
36 Ibid., p. 151.
37 Ibid., p. 152.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., pp. 153-54.
40 Ibid., p. 142.
41 Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 214.
42 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 39.
43 Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in History of the Industrial Enterprise. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1962), pp. 21-22.
44 Ibid., p. 23.
CHAPTER FIVE: JUDAH AND THE ELEPHANT
1 George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 52.
2 Sacramento Union, July 12, 1862.
3 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 56. Judah’s report, dated Sept. 1, 1862, is in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
4 David Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 129.
5 Ibid., pp. 130-31; Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 58-59.
6 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 60.
7 Sacramento Union, Aug. 22, 1864.
8 Judah’s report of Oct. 22, 1862, is in the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
9 Charles Crocker interview, Bancroft Library, Berkeley.
10 Robert Utley and Francis Ketterson, Jr., Golden Spike (Washington, D.C: National Park Service, 1969), p. 15. Southern Pacific historian Lynn Farrar in an Aug. 22, 1999, letter to S. E. Ambrose, comments, “Riegel is dreaming. No books of Crocker & Co. were ever produced for anyone to disentangle. Mark Hopkins saw to that. They disappeared.”
11 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 61.
12 Crocker interview, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
13 Sacramento Union, Jan. 9, 1863, in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
14 Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
15 Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, pp. 22-23.
16 John W. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, pp. 214-15. Starr is the only one who points out that Sargent was no longer in Congress; all the other authorities on the CP list him as either a representative or a senator at this time.
17 Carl Wheat, “A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah,” p. 262.
18 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter [to Bancroft], 12/14/89,” Bancroft Library.
19 Sacramento Union, April 29, 1863.
20 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 65; Bruce Clement Cooper, Lewis Metzler Clement: A Pioneer of the Central Pacific Railroad (privately printed, 1991), p. 5.
21 Quoted in Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 137.
22 Judah’s 1862 report is in the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley; see also Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 259.
23 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p.35.
24 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 55.
25 Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 13, 1868, Huntington Papers, Library of Congress.
26 Ibid.
27 Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 139.
28 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 67.
29 Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 140; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 67.
30 Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 141.
31 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
32 Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 262.
33 Ibid.; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 68.
34 Griswold, Work of G
iants, p. 39.
35 Sacramento Union, Oct. 27, 1863.
36 This was the eleventh locomotive to arrive in California. It had been shipped on the Herald of the Morning in May 1863 and arrived on Sept. 20. (Wendell Huffman, “Railroads Shipped by Sea,” Railroad History, Spring 1999, p. 27.)
37 Sacramento Union, Nov. 11, 1863.
38 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 41.
39 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 90.
40 Lynn Farrar to Stephen Ambrose, Aug. 22, 1999.
41 Sacramento Union, Feb. 18, 1864.
42 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 91.
43 Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
44 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 92.
45 Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
46 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 88.
47 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 83.
48 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 82.
49 Ibid., p. 87.
50 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 87.
51 Ibid., p. 92.
52 Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
53 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 93.
54 “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
CHAPTER SIX: LAYING OUT THE UNION PACIFIC LINE
1 Young to Durant, Oct. 23, 1863, and Jan. 26, 1864, Brigham Young Papers, Archives, Church of Latter-Day Saints Library, Salt Lake City.
2 Dey to Reed, April 25, 1864, Samuel Reed Papers, UP Archives, Omaha.
3 Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, pp. 52-53.
4 Ibid., p. 54.
5 Ibid., p. 55.
6 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 103.
7 Quoted in ibid., p. 104.
8 Henry Morton Stanley, Autobiography (Boston, 1909), p. 226.
9 J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, pp. 172-72.
10 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 106.
11 Ibid., p. 174.
12 William T. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 411-12; see also Robert Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 5, page 39.
13 Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 176.
14 Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 130.
15 Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 36.
16 Chicago Tribune, Aug. 14, 1865.
17 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 63.
18 Harper’s Weekly, July 22, 1865, p. 450.
Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 Page 46
